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PathScale Gives FreeBSD, NetBSD A New C++ Runtime

05-25-2011, 08:20 AM

Phoronix: PathScale Gives FreeBSD, NetBSD A New C++ Runtime

PathScale, the compiler company that is behind the high-performance 64-bit EKOPath compiler suite and GPGPU computing solutions, has granted the FreeBSD and NetBSD foundations a copy of their libcxxrt C++ runtime. Libcxxrt provides a C++ ABI for Itanium and x86 architectures for BSD. This copy of libcxxrt will be provided to BSD users under a 2-clause BSD license rather than being under the GPL...

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Good job, little doggies; make a great BSD distribution again. Usher in a new golden age of BSD progress. Develop an operating system truly worthy of envy.

And then watch the Microsofts and Apples of the world take your code, make it proprietary, change it in incompatible ways, and productize it, then rake billions of dollars off the top of your efforts, and contribute no code in return. "Thanks for all your hard work," they'll say, "and thanks for choosing the BSD license."

Think it won't happen? That's how OS X started out. Think it won't happen? That's how Solaris started out (well, they didn't use the BSD license, but it's still a non-copyleft license they chose).

I call it the BSD disjunction. Either your software sucks, and no one wants to productize or use it anyway; or your software is really good, and someone will happily vacuum up your work, make it their own, add on features and break compatibility with your software, and sell it. And leave you in the dust. The only reason why modern BSD distros don't already see that happening is because Linux is lightyears ahead of BSD already in terms of hardware enablement, performance, robustness and community size. And the GPL keeps the community honest, preventing someone from creating a proprietary operating system based on Linux and the GNU toolchain. You can be damn sure that they'd have done that long ago if the copyleft weren't keeping an eye on them. Instead, we get big companies rolling up their sleeves and sending patches to LKML. I like that fate much better.

The other stuff PathScale is doing really intrigues me, though. If they can get the GPGPU performance of Fermi on PSCNV up to a level near the binary, that would be a huge win for people who want to run a dedicated server using a Fermi card for GPGPU. I actually investigated a possible application of that for my own uses: using OpenCL to do real-time physics modelling using the Bullet physics engine and OpenSimulator. The hope is that you'd be able to push a much larger server-side physics workload in OpenSimulator if you use OpenCL to do the processing on a large GPU. The CPU would be freed up to do more mundane tasks that are less math-intensive, like keeping track of object and agent positions and properties. You could either run a large number of regions on a single server, or run one very physics-intensive region with a degree of dynamic content that we aren't used to seeing in OpenSimulator.

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Eh, that is part of the appeal of the *BSD license: Creating something that everyone can use. Yes, it might get picked up by a commercial company. So what? If their end product is worth what they charge for it, even when competing against the OSS products it uses code from, they have per definition added value.

Consider OS X. I don't use it, but I have to help people using it now and then - and I'm really glad they could get a reasonably modern userland for it, instead of sticking with the significantly uglier OpenSTEP one they had in the earliest versions.

As for "lightyears ahead", well - stop trolling.

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And then watch the Microsofts and Apples of the world take your code, make it proprietary, change it in incompatible ways, and productize it, then rake billions of dollars off the top of your efforts, and contribute no code in return. "Thanks for all your hard work," they'll say, "and thanks for choosing the BSD license."

What is the difference between MS/Apple taking that code and not 'giving back' and Linux developers which also take that BSD code, change the license to GPL and also do not 'give back' anything since the code is GPL now.

Linux is the same kind of parasite that MS/Apple are here.

... and You should finally UNDERSTAND what BSD license is all about, a free code that does not have any strings attached to it, there is no 'forced (lack of) freedom' like with GPL, its REALLY FREE code and You know what? BSD developers does not have anything against such actions like taking that code and closing it (MS/Apple), that is the IDEA of BSD licensed code, its REALLY FREE code, take it and DO ANYTHING YOU WANT WITH IT.

... and BTW, do this always must end in 'license fight'? Cant You grow up and focus on the code/features instead of jerking off about the license? Does Your religion forces You to do that over and over again?

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Good job, little doggies; make a great BSD distribution again. Usher in a new golden age of BSD progress. Develop an operating system truly worthy of envy.

And then watch the Microsofts and Apples of the world take your code, make it proprietary, change it in incompatible ways, and productize it, then rake billions of dollars off the top of your efforts, and contribute no code in return. "Thanks for all your hard work," they'll say, "and thanks for choosing the BSD license."

Yeah, Apple never contributes anything. It's not like they funded the entire LLVM project... And they never had anything to do with Webkit. And it's not like you can download the whole XNU kernel and a bunch of OS X libraries source code from http://www.opensource.apple.com/.

Oh, wait...

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Yeah, Apple never contributes anything. It's not like they funded the entire LLVM project... And they never had anything to do with Webkit. And it's not like you can download the whole XNU kernel and a bunch of OS X libraries source code from http://www.opensource.apple.com/.

Oh, wait...

WebKit is a fork of Khtml, which makes both LGPL. And even Apple being obligated to show up or pay up, and they don't show all the code, nor pay all the developers.

Also, if your point is "code that is free to use", the XNU kernel is not a good example for you to use. Xnu is under the Apple Public Source License, so it's not GPL-compatible among other licenses totally "fine" with BSD license.

So the only "valid" point you made was "funded the entire LLVM project". Still, LLVM was open source from the start, and it started without Apple, Apple didn't choose the BSD-way, the project was already on this path.

Yes, it's true, they contributed, money to the LLVM developer and BSD license has nothing to do with it (since they took KHTML too).

I'm not arguing that GPL is better or BSD is worse, or vice-versa. What I don't like is this new "BSD purism", GNU/Linux on the other side still uses all code it can without prejudice based on licenses that are open. That's how open BSD seems to me now.

What is the difference between MS/Apple taking that code and not 'giving back' and Linux developers which also take that BSD code, change the license to GPL and also do not 'give back' anything since the code is GPL now.

Linux is the same kind of parasite that MS/Apple are here.

This is what I don't get with certain BSD afficionados, first they pound their chest while saying Oh! BSD is so free that you can do whatever you want with it, and then they say those who do are parasites? And I would say that there's quite a difference between proprietary code and GPL code, as someone who has actually done alot of reverse-engineering in my days I can tell you that it's insanely easier to (clean-room) reverse-engineer from source code than it is from proprietary software. So from a BSD standpoint, although the best situation would be that changes be distributed under a BSD-compatible licence, but if not then GPL licenced source code sure is better than proprietary should they want to implement the same functionality. It's funny therefore that many times BSD fans seem to be just fine with their code being used in proprietary programs while getting pissed when it's used in GPL licenced programs, what gives?

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What is the difference between MS/Apple taking that code and not 'giving back' and Linux developers which also take that BSD code, change the license to GPL and also do not 'give back' anything since the code is GPL now.

Linux is the same kind of parasite that MS/Apple are here.

Haha, but the point was bsd gets screwed, because of its stupidity. Or... maybe they simply like supporting Linux, MS, Apple and others.

... and You should finally UNDERSTAND what BSD license is all about, a free code that does not have any strings attached to it, there is no 'forced (lack of) freedom' like with GPL, its REALLY FREE code and You know what?

To be really FREE you have to follow rules. The bsd doesn't give freedom to protect your own code.

Yeah, how generous of Apple to release source packages whose build scripts depend on their proprietary build tools, which they only provide for their proprietary operating system, which they only provide for their proprietary hardware.